Education may not boost employability

With 50 percent of recent college graduates unable to find work suitable to their degrees, what are our colleges actually preparing students for? One issue in the presidential campaign is equal pay for equal work. But is the work always equal? There are reasons why men with math and engineering degrees earn more money than women with “education” or “women's studies” degrees.

As a further illustration, according to Thomas Sowell's book “Economic Facts and Fallacies,” while men represent 54 percent of the workforce, they account for 92 percent of job-related deaths. If you're going to work in a job where you might get killed, you'd expect to be paid more for the risks you're taking.

The problem of getting a useful education has been recognized for a long time. In 1942, economist Joseph Schumpeter wrote that the expansion of higher education beyond market demand creates for white-collar workers “employment in substandard work or at wages below those of better-paid manual workers.” What's more, “it may create unemployability of a particularly disconcerting type. The man who goes through college or university easily becomes physically unemployable without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work.”

So if a graduate has either a bachelor of arts or master's degree in sociology, psychology or, in my daughter's case, Greek and history, lots of luck finding a good-paying job. After working minimal-wage jobs for a few years, my daughter is now an Army paralegal serving in Afghanistan, as is my son who, with his political science degree, is now an infantry platoon leader in that same country.

I graduated with a bachelor of science in applied math and was never unemployed during my entire working career while, it seems, teachers with “education” degrees annually face layoff notices as governments go broke because the overtaxed and regulated private sector is suffering.

Burl Estes

Mission Viejo

Marriage means ‘commit'

Attempting to find better terms for unmarried couples [“Longing for a term,” Life, Oct. 29] is just trying to find better makeup to hide a blemish. The social experiment that began in the 1960s to dismantle the traditional family in America has failed.

High rates in divorce, out-of-wedlock births, crime and welfare are some consequences of going in the wrong direction. Marriage and family have always been the foundations of society, and when that foundation is weakened, a society will ultimately fail. Marriage represents love, commitment, trust and strength of character.

Co-habitating represents none of that, only temporary convenience. Married couples have earned the right to have the honorable titles of husband and wife. So let unmarried couples struggle with the awkwardness of the situation that they've created, and settle for less honorable titles. If they don't like the term “live-in lover,” they can take the titles used by the pioneers of the movement, who referred to their partners as “my old lady” and “my old man.”

Maybe, with enough discomfort, there will come some conviction of conscience to do the right thing.

Mark Vaughan

Orange

Amnesty once more

Rand Corp.'s James P. Smith should heed Einstein's definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results” [“Immigration needs a hybrid fix,” Nov. 1].

Maybe he doesn't remember the “one-time only” amnesty bill of 1986 or, I should say, the “pathway to citizenship” bill. That bill was supposed to crack down on employers who hired illegal workers and secure the border once and for all.

Instead, fraudulent applications tainted the process, many employers continued their illicit hiring practices and illegal immigration surged. The same thing will happen again if we let it, but this time there won't be 2.7 million more newly minted citizens, but more than 20-million plus, whoever they decide to sponsor.

The best way to fix the illegal immigration problem is to actually start enforcing the law for a change, which means deporting anyone who is here illegally.

Randle C. Sink

Huntington Beach

Conservation rebates

Poseidon Group has been battling conservationists for years to build a desalinization plant in Huntington Beach and other locales. Southern California does not need an alternate water source. Residential and commercial consumers need to continue water conservation measures.

However, it behooves local governments and municipalities to urge and provide rebates for those responsible enough to re-landscape their lawns and properties with native plants and to retrofit indoor plumbing fixtures with low-flow water conserving devices.

We cannot continue our wasteful ways always thinking that some future form of technology will provide us with our unnecessary luxuries.

Steve Tyler

Orange

‘The perfect pathogens'

Oregon public health officials recently traced a nasty outbreak of norovirus infections in a group of soccer players to an unlikely source: a reusable grocery bag contaminated with what some experts are calling “the perfect pathogens.”

What this means is we have to start washing our reusable bags now, a task most would decline. So, there they go into the trash, since many would prefer to throw them away and just pay for new ones than waste the time washing them. Not to mention the energy cost as well. Bring back plastic bags before this gets out of hand.

Joseph B. D. Saraceno

Gardena

Sad truths about suicide

I appreciate the young women who are attempting to thwart future bridge suicides by requesting the Anaheim City Council construct a higher fence [“Bridge deaths prompt six teens to act,” Local, Oct. 25].

I am genuinely sorry about the suicide of their dear friend, Jazmin. However, I wonder how much more government agencies must do (and spend) to protect people? People, young and old, must be responsible for themselves. If somebody wants to commit suicide, they will find a way. A person in my family did it, so I know. Where there's a will, they will find a way.

Susan Grantham

Huntington Beach

Slippery excuse for a sign

So, with all that is happening in Orange County with regard the financial crisis, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals wants to spend money on a sign memorializing some dead fish [“This is one fish tale that's for real,” Local, Oct. 30]?

I am not sure what possible rationale there could be to justify such an idiotic expense. PETA followers are the poster children for fanaticism.

Scott Irwin

Fullerton

American generosity

In light of the devastating storm that pummeled the East Coast and the terrible cost in both life and property [“Some hope amid darkness,” Front Page, Nov. 2], where are the cargo planes filled with aid and volunteers from our allies and neighbors? Until this happens, America is truly exceptional.

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